Dad POV version

My boy was in the bigs barely long enough to get his cap back on after the national anthem. Figures. After all the mouthing I did down at the plant, Max ends up a trivia question on SportsCenter, a joke for the late innings of a televised blowout: Name the only major league pitcher to suffer a career-ending injury without ever actually getting to the mound.

Officially he blew out his elbow warming up in the bullpen --- the papers didn't mention the Jumbo-Pak of Maysweet Sunflower Seeds, thank the good Lord above, or else his mother and I would've had to move. He's had this thing for Maysweet Sunflower Seeds as long as I can remember, since Pee-Wee ball at least. Can't get his jock on without them. How can I describe this bag? Let's just say "jumbo" isn't a big enough word. This is a bag you squat to lift and throw over your shoulder, the beginnings of a levee. With this thing, the Central Division is fixed for sunflower seeds. On top of that, it's designed to ride out a plunge into the heart of the sun. It's impregnable. Bulletproof. Seaworthy.

So the boy'd been busting his hump for six years in double and triple-A ball, really paying his dues, when he gets called up. Naturally his mother and I are there, wouldn't miss his big league debut for the world, and we're all settled in, squirting mustard on our hotdogs, making a big deal of the boy's name being in the program and what have you. The team's finished taking infield, the ump's dusting off the plate, and where's Max? Still in the bullpen, going at that damn bag of sunflower seeds like his mother and I are trapped inside. He's tried everything short of TNT when suddenly the thing opens, by which I mean explodes in every direction, a sunflower seed supernova, and there's no chance of salvaging even a handful. And anyway by this time even the organist is cramping up, so the boy writes off the sunflower seeds, bolts out of the bullpen and takes maybe three steps before he trips over the warning track. His mother thinks he's been assassinated, and she's squawking her head off at me like I'm supposed to already be scuffling with the gunman, for crying out loud.

Max scrambles to his feet, waves off the trainer, and then down he goes again, the ground up against his cheek, a blade of grass in his ear. Out cold with his throwing arm twisted up under him like that guy in Deliverance. The skipper takes one look at the MRI and slings his arm around the boy's shoulder. Tough break, kid. You got a ride home?

The ride back is long, the boy conked out in the backseat, his mother yammering non-stop about

And then he's back in his old bedroom with his pennants and posters, bobbleheads, souvenir programs, popcorn-box megaphone, AM radio, Reggie Jackson nightlight. I stand in the doorway with my hands in my pockets while his mother shakes imaginary dust out of the boy's blankets and fusses with his Felix the Cat alarm clock, finding reasons to linger. And I can't blame her. The boy's twenty-two years old, feet hanging over the end of the bed, job offers turned down, college skipped, bereft of even the most rudimentary knowledge that keeps a roof overhead and food on the table, no more self-sufficient than the day we brought him into the world.

That night I dream of voter registration, compound interest, resumes, life insurance, laundry, tire rotation, termite control and all the other mundane details of life that even the dullest among the boy's high school graduating class have long since mastered. Barely an hour has ticked off old Felix when I hear the boy crying and feel his mother get up to go check on him.

The sun came up, the sun went down. My 401K hemmed and hawed, his mother's tomatoes ripened on the kitchen windowsill. The seasons rolled past his bedroom window like a sleepy grade school filmstrip, and the North American continental plate drifted beneath his feet. He married Elaine Moffitt, his high school sweetheart, and took a job selling sporting goods at her father's department store. For three years they failed to bring forth a child. Tests showed Elaine was as fertile as a flood plain. It was him. It happens sometimes, the doctors said.